Chennai: Chennaiites came together on Wednesday to demand the withdrawal of the de-recognition of IIT-M student body, Ambedkar Periyar Study Circle, and to propagate that such bodies should exist in all educational institutions. P.B. Prince Gajendra Babu, organiser of the meet and general secretary of the state platform for common school system, said the students discussed about normal social issues like land acquisition bill, insurance bill, foreign direct investment and UGC being scrapped.
“Should the students not discuss about annihilation of caste, gender equity, social equity? It is the management which should protect the interests of students. But, instead, they de-recognise such bodies. This is totally undemocratic,” he said. He added that this was an act to threaten students to keep shut. Such threats will not help in bringing about democratic order. He said, “We want the management to withdraw the de-recognition of APSC and the dean to apologise to the students.”
Dr V. Vasanthidevi, former vice-chancellor of Manonmaniam Sundaranar University, said the institution should facilitate discussions and forums. “The recent happenings show that certain upper caste people are taking important decisions and sidelining SC/ST, OBC students by not giving them a chance to discuss their ideologies,” she said. While Ambedkar’s ideas were on equality, Periyar’s was based on rationalism, she pointed out.
State-funded institutions like IIT had a basic responsibility towards society as a whole. Only critical social issues should be discussed at such institutions and not irrelevant ones. “The guidelines for the students’ union had just come in March and it has been implemented only in April – and it is very ambiguous. This shows that the institution did not handle the whole issue in a correct way,” she said.
She added that unless students are given the freedom, opportunity and encouragement to discuss social issues there won’t be any development. Prof A. Karunanandam, former head of the Department of History, Vivekananda College, said criticism could not be said to be anti-national. “If the management is trying to condemn them for one reason or the other, then they are promoting terrorism. So, natural liberties have to be granted to students,” he said.
